Michelle Malkin

Michelle Maglalang Malkin is a right-wing nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate whose articles have been published by Townhall.com, Jewish World Review, and WorldNetDaily. Malkin also writes a blog popular among conservatives. In April 2006, Malkin co-founded "conservative Internet broadcast network" HotAir.com.[1]

Setting standards for mean-spiritedness

Malkin's mean-spirited commentary has led Geraldo Rivera to state that she is "the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life"[2]. And Andrew Sullivan initiated a "Malkin Award", a prize for "for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric"[3]

Invective against Winter Soldier

Critical Assessment

Ward Churchill's critical assessment of Malkin:

Well, she came out with a book titled In Defense of Internment in 2004[5], highly touted in hard right circles, that not only seeks to justify the mass internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, but argues that the same procedure could be used against Arabs and Arab Americans today. Setting aside the squalor of her thesis, and the gross distortions of data to which she resorts in "supporting" it, the fact is that the bulk of her argument on the World War II internment derives from a fairly obscure right-winger named Lillian Baker. Yet Baker's material is cited nowhere in Malkin's book. In fact, she isn't so much as mentioned (perhaps because Baker, who passed away some years back, was exposed by Deborah Lipstadt in Denying the Holocaust as having employed the same "scholarly methods" as neo-Nazi holocaust deniers).
What's the payout for Malkin? Let's start with a stint as a regular commentator -- read, pet "minority" (she's Filipina) -- on Fox News and Clear Channel. And let's end with an all but total silence about her "scholarly integrity" from the left. Why? Because she is paid by a right-wing think-tank [ed.'s note: Malkin worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute until 1995], rather than holding a regular faculty position somewhere? Gimme a break on that one. Her book is used in classes, and she speaks regularly on campuses across the country. If the left is going to indulge in condemning scholarly lapses -- real or imaginary -- where its own are concerned, it has at the very least an obligation to hold the right accountable to the same standards, and to do so to the best of its ability -- through alternative media, if nothing else -- using the same tools as the right.[6]

Career with Fox News

Michelle Malkin began appearing on Fox News in 2001, making regular guest appearances on some of their most popular programs, including The Sean Hannity Show, Fox and Friends, and The O'Reilly Factor. In 2007, after a heated dispute with fellow pundit Geraldo Rivera when she made the decision to stop her regular appearances on the Factor. Geraldo later apologized, but Malkin considered the apology "A Complete Farce" [2]